September 2, 2012 City Finance Committee Discusses Whitesburg Sewer Contract One-Hour Before Scheduled Vote

City Council Finance Committee: There is nothing like looking at a contract one hour before the main meeting where you have it on the agenda for a vote--- and being told about five minutes before the main meeting that there is one "little" problem with a paragraph in the contract that might just be "unconstitutional."

That is just part of the discussion on August 21 at a City Finance Committee meeting where the city-county Whitesburg Sewer Project Agreement was discussed.

Paul LeBel, who is sitting between County Mayor Bill Brittain and City Councilperson Kay Senter, gets to vote twice on the contract. He voted for the contract as a county commissioner on August 23

and will get to vote on the contract as a city councilperson.

Although Tony Cox and Bill Brittain wanted the city council to go ahead and vote on the Agreement on August 21, the council unanimously voted to postpone consideration of the contract to its September 4 meeting.

August 14, 2005 The money merry-go-round

I took a few days off from posting...

But I'm back and ready to report on the Special Committee and its examination of the Russellville Sewer Grant and the Courthouse Addition on August 9, 2005.

As is almost always the case where financial information is involved, we were handed sheets with cost information after we arrived. Then we were expected to digest the information and ask questions on the spot.

I asked several questions, but I have several more that I will be sending to the Trustee and County Mayor.

( I think it would be very helpful, particularly where financial information is involved, to get a report 3-4 workdays ahead of the meeting, so you can check the figures , compare information, and get your questions together--but that's just the way I like to approach financial issues. )

HAMBLEN COUNTY COURTHOUSE ADDITION. Commissioners were given a document by the County Mayor/Finance Department in 2004 that said contracts for this project totalled $2.5 million and that the amount spent on this project was $2.5 million. I questioned that immediately. I know and everyone on commission knows that no building project comes out perfectly like that. It's either over or under. It's never perfect. I asked for the total cost figures for that project. I received no reply. Another individual asked for the breakdown of costs that the Mayor/Finance Director compiled and added to get the $2.5 million amount shown as “spent” on the courthouse addition. She received no reply. When she and I went to the Mayor's Office and asked for the report or spreadsheet that had been used to come up with the $2.5 million "spent," we were told that it had been done by hand and there was no report or spreadsheet to back up the total reported to commission.

"Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!" as Goober would say. The committee was handed a document months later entitled Hamblen County Courthouse Addition Construction Project. It showed that actually $2,671,825 was spent on the addition. It showed that the amount spent on the addition came from bond proceeds ($2,500,000), Capital Improvement Fund/Health Department ($94,324), General Fund/Other Charges/Data Processing ($50,000), EMA/E911 ($16,339), and Interest Earned ($11,162). This document was dated March 2, 2001---meaning it's been available for the past 7-8 months that people have been requesting information on the true courthouse addition costs. Why wasn't it provided?

I had someone ask me how the health department could donate or give back $94,324 to the county for construction on the county courthouse. That's an excellent question that I wondered about as well. It will require some follow-up.

It was also interesting to find that $48,154 of Courthouse Addition "construction" money was spent on digitized mapping.

You just sit and actually marvel at the way money is moved and spent and labeled as one thing but spent on another. The two sets of accounting numbers that the County Mayor/Finance Director insist on keeping come to mind every time I see money being shifted around.

The 2004 audit (p. 194) with its report of $360,000 being shifted from fund to fund without approval of county commission also comes to mind. Months ago, the Audit Committee requested that Mayor David Purkey and Finance Director Nicole Epps inform us as to why the money was shifted and what previous errors were being "corrected" by these shifts. No answer.

You have to marvel at that, too. County Mayor David Purkey, the county's chief financial officer, and Finance Director Nicole Epps won't tell the Audit Committee what they were "correcting" in 2004 when they shifted $360,000 around! Who had paid that much money out of the wrong funds to begin with? Who authorized the payments out of the wrong funds?

I asked the Tribune to report my comment on the Courthouse Addition since I asked the initial questions. They did not use my quote, so I include it here:

"There is a serious lack of accountability and responsiveness on the part of the Finance Department of Hamblen County. This is evidenced by the fact that a Special Committee of the Hamblen County Commission had to meet yesterday in order to obtain from the Finance Department documentation of what is said to be the true and accurate costs for the multi-million dollar Hamblen County Courthouse Addition and for the Russellville Sewer project that was completed in 2004.

On the Courthouse Addition, the committee found that when it was told in 2004 that $2,500,000 exactly had been the "contracts" amount and that $2,500,000 exactly had been "spent" on this project, the reality was that over $171,000 more than that was spent and that a large portion of that overrun was covered by funds that had originally been appropriated to the local health department. All this was shown on a document bearing a date of 3/2/01. Why was this not provided to commissioners or members of the public who asked for the total costs of that project months ago?

I sincerely hope that securing financial information about the spending of taxpayer dollars will not require appointment of special committees in the future."

RUSSELLVILLE SEWER GRANT. Questions about the sewer grant procedures, costs, who got free taps, and approval of the county match of $120,000 have been asked by me and a few others for months (at least since December 2004 when the county was told that the total sewer costs were $601,426.15). At that time, I asked for documentation of when the county approved the $120,000 match that was required in the grant application.

I was never opposed to the sewer grant. It was a much needed project for residents of that area (off Old Russellville Pike). I did, however, want to know about the grant process, the actual final costs, the list of residents who got free taps and those who paid for taps, and, specifically, when the county approved the $120,000 match that the grant required at the outset. I had seen in the commission minutes where the prior commission approved $100,000 in matching money in Feb. 2001, but I had never seen approval of the other $20,000 that the CDBG apparently requires to be on record before they will approve the grant.

Although government procedures are sometimes "unusual," I would be very surprised to find that the state approved the grant without having the county provide copies of resolutions passed by commission appropriating the entire county match of $120,000. At the meeting, Sharee Long, with the Mayor's office, couldn't provide any information about the remaining $20,000 county match--other than assuring us that she'd try to find out more about the match if there was still a question.

As for the costs, we were given a sheet that had about three different "costs" and you could take your pick. There was a CDBG line item budget total cost of $601,426.15. This is what Mayor Purkey had said the total costs were in December 2004. Then there was "approved contract amounts" of $602,626.15. Then there was a "Total Expenditures to date" of $603,305.09. There was also $2,700 that was added to the contract with Public Systems sometime after the grant application was made.

This was what I asked the Tribune to report as my comment on the sewer project report:

"The Russellville sewer project report showed a small discrepancy between what was reported as the total costs to commission in December 2004 and what was reported yesterday. Some of the questions about Russellville relate to if, when, and how the county approved the $120,000 funding match that was required before the grant could be approved. And just yesterday, the county found out that a contract with Public Services System of Alabama was increased by $2,700 at some time although this increase was not shown in the revised line item budget for this project as late as August 2004."

The Tribune did not report my comment.

And I would add...if county commissioners are not willing to stand up for accountability, to require accurate financial reports, and to insist on a response when $360,000 is shifted around as occurred in 2004, then as Pogo said long ago: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

July 11, 2005 Response to Financial Questions: SILENCE

The Hamblen County Commission has committee meetings today--finance, personnel & policies, public services, and audit. All meetings are open to the public. They begin at 3:00 in the large courtroom on the 2nd floor in the old portion of the courthouse.

Silence. That is the response thus far to my June request for a review of the recently completed Russellville sewer grant, for documented verification of the total costs of capital improvements/building projects, for a revised (accurate) list of county-owned vehicles to address vehicles that have not been reported in the past or that were placed in the wrong department, and for an answer to what county money was switched around in 2004 and why this was done without authorization by county commission.

Silence is not an appropriate answer to financial questions, but that is the response thus far and that is exactly what I expected. Silence or attacking the messenger has been the favorite tactic of various individuals every time an audit, accounting, or financial question has been asked.

Both of these responses tell us that (1) there is a lot of financial information that no one is willing to talk about or explain openly, (2) there must be a lot to hide if no one is willing to answer questions about county finances, and (3) there are no or, at best, very inadequate controls over county spending.

Our new state auditors have done a terrific job in their first two financial audits (2003 and 2004). However, it's been a struggle to get some of the county officials at the local level to be open and transparent in discussing the state auditors' findings and to be open and transparent in answering questions about the handling of county funds.

The hallmark of accountability is openness. We're not there yet, but we're on the way.